When I was first asked by my friends if I wanted to do a month long internship in Spain, in my head I was thinking "ABSOLUTELY NOT". As a very antisocial, introverted individual, the thought of spending an entire month in a foreign country absolutely terrified me. Eventually I filled out the application and everything was all set to go, this internship was going to happen. It never really sunk in until our departure day. Those nervous feelings hit HARD. I woke up early that morning with an immense amount of butterflies in my stomach. So bad to the point where I couldn't eat anything the entire day, and most of our first day in Granada, I felt AWFUL. Our first flight felt very long, I spent the entire time trying to find a comfortable enough position to hopefully be able to fall asleep, which unfortunately did NOT happen. Getting through the airport in Madrid was easy going, didn't take too long to figure out where to go to get to our connecting flight to Granada. At this point I felt like a slug, my eyes were either wide open because I was attempting to stay awake or closed because I was actually randomly dozing off. Thankfully our second flight was a short one, it only took 45 minutes to get to our final destination, got a short nap in on this one which felt really nice. We got to the Granada airport and finally met Mike for the first time in person. He talked a bit about some of the history of Granada as we drove into the city. Since I was only half awake at this point, I kinda stared blankly out the window, even tho in my head I was thinking “wow this is sweet”.
During our first day in Granada, Sarah and I were able to meet the children of our host family; María Isabel, Tomás, and Enrique. We first met María who welcomed us into her home, where we settled down in room they had graciously prepared for us. There is a lovely balcony connected to our room that is covered in flowers and flowerpots. It’s a great view to look out on each day and look down onto the street to see the people walking by. We took some time to sit at their table to get to know each other over a pot of tea. While María can speak a bit of english, it was still a bit tricky trying to have a conversation at first. I think over the course of the month it will definitely get easier for all of us. After our long day of traveling, we were able to take some time to rest up before eating lunch at 3 pm with our host family. Following lunch we met up again with our group and toured The Granada Cathedral. The Cathedral is absolutely breathtaking, every inch is a work of art. While walking through the Cathedral I had almost completely forgot about how tired I was. The intricately constructed white pillars, walls and ceilings were illuminated by the light peering in through the windows it was truly an amazing sight the second we walked in. To conclude our first day we all gathered at one of the other host family's home for dinner, where we chatted enjoyed some amazing meter long italian pizza. Even though we are in spain, that pizza brought me right back to my time in italy, that was pretty comforting feeling. While it had been a very long and exhausting two days, it was a great kick start to the rest of the trip.
The next morning, our alarm was set at around 9 am. That gave us enough time to get ready and meet with the group at 10:30. Sarah and I had a cup of tea for breakfast and was on our way out the door. This day we were able to visit each of our internship locations. The first being the Hospital San Rafael, where Sarah, Jillian, Austin, and Brianna with be working for their internships. The hospital also includes a school where we got to meet some of the nurses and doctors as well as being able to see around the school.
The next stop was Sacromonte. To get to this location we had to use bus transportation. Along the way to the Sacromonte where Caleb and I will be doing the restoration portion of our internship, it was great to be able to see more of the city as we drove through the narrow streets. We arrived at the sacromonte and were introduced to Lourdes and Lola Blanca López. They are in charge of all the artwork restoration and will be showing us the processes of our internship there. As first impressions I thought they were extremely cool, I adored their outfits. They brought us up to their work room as well as their storage rooms. These rooms contained a lot of important pieces that were cleaned, organized and ready for restoring. They mentioned that since there are only two of them, there are so many pieces in back order that they would have enough work till their retirement. There is another room as well that contains history books and all of the paperwork for each art piece. They explained that a lot of prep work, research, planning and analyzing need to be set and approved by the government before any restoration work can begin. I would have never guessed that so much pre planning needed to be done beforehand. When we were given a tour through the more private sections of the Sacromonte, it then started to dawn me that we are going to be working with extremely valuable and historically significant art pieces, I was immediately nervous. While we won’t be doing any physical restoration work, we will be organizing and cleaning the pieces and getting familiar with that process. I definitely think it will also be a great experience to learn some interesting history about the art in spain as well as the restoration process up close.
Inmaculada University (lunch):
After visiting the Sacromonte we took a few buses over to the school where we will be eating lunch together during the week. The second we entered the school the first thing I noticed was how all of the students were dressed. Everyone looked so put together, clean and fashionable I was quite intimidated. In comparison, as our group was discussing, most of the students attending St. Joes, arrive to classes in sweatpants or pajamas so this was definitely a change. It’s fascinating to see the drastic different in attire when you go to a different country, whether it’s going out on the town or simple school clothing. We took a while searching through the menu trying to translate what everything was. I ended up with a plain ham and cheese sandwich, it was simple, tasted good and made me happy. After lunch we decided to get back to the center of the city. Following lunch is typically when siesta starts. The Siesta is the time of the day following lunch where people go home to relax or take a nap. Instead of taking the time to rest, a few of our group members decided that we would rather explore around the city a bit more. While wandering about, we came across a Botanical Garden. This is an outdoor area that contained orange trees, cacti, flowers and sitting benches. We had a fun little time walking about in there, I absolutely adored all the orange tree which seem to be very common in Granada. It was very nice to be able to walk about the city and have the time to get more familiar with the area. Definitely eased my stress because while walking around I can tell that it’s a really safe city that I feel very comfortable in.
After we spent some time to ourselves we went out to get tapas. Tapas is where you order a drink and get a complimentary food along with it. Depending on where you go sometimes you are able to choose what you want for your tapas, but in most cases you get what they give you. This was our first time having tapas in Granada, we ordered our drinks and chose to have chicken curry. The curry was amazing ! I definitely could have eaten 3 plates of it, but I soon remembered that we still had to have dinner shortly after. We went home for dinner at around 10 pm, where we got to talk and get to know our host parents while their kids were in Barcelona visiting the eldest daughter for her birthday. The parents are such amazing people, they were so sweet and funny and were glad to help us out in learning spanish while they got to learn some english as well. They were very interested in what we like to do and what it’s like back at the United States, they definitely made us feel very welcome.
The third day in Granada for the most part was open for us to take the first half of the day to venture around the city some more. There are so many stores in Granada that I want to go into and am so excited to start buying things to bring home and show my fam. After a couple hours of walking we stopped to take a break in one of the city parks. We squished on a small bench and people watched for a while. Not gonna lie I love people watching, I think it is one of the most fascinating and interesting things, to sit and see all of the different types of people. There was a food stand near by that was selling bread and croissants. We split what we figured was some sort of sweet bread, and continued to sit and chat for a while. Once it got closer to around 1 o’clock we ventured back towards the Cathedral; lunch was at 3 so we headed back at around 2:30.
Later on at around 6:30 our entire group got together to head over to a Flamenco show. We were let in a bit early and were led downstairs to the show. It was a smaller sized room that was, with a row of tables on either side of the room with a narrow open isle center for the performers to go onto the stage. There was a spanish singer, a guitarist and a flamenco dancer. The singer and the guitarist played a few songs, I was completely mesmerized by the vocal power and control the singer had. His voice echoed through the room and completely engulfed us in song. I also found the guitarist to be very interesting, I watching his hand move as he played and was astounded at how skilled he was. I could have listened to him play all day, it was beautiful. And of course the flamenco dancer, it is clear that the flamenco dancing is a very powerful and emotional dance. She has a very stern and intent facial expression throughout her dances but you could see the emotions through it as well as through her movements. This absolutely fantastic to watch and listen to; I didn’t want the show to end.
To conclude the day, we went out to a restaurant for drinks and tapas. It was a lovely restaurant with amazing food, I ordered the duck risotto which was very good. We continued to walk for a bit, stopping by at another restaurant until we decided to go back to go to sleep. Even though we have only been in Granada for a few days, it has been an exciting few days. The language is still challenging to learn and understand but I think it will continue to get better and easier throughout the month. Tomorrow is our first day of our internships, I am a bit nervous but I know it’s going to be a great experience and I can’t wait to start.
